


because you're young, he's a gun

by pekorama



Series: Let Him Under Your Skin (Reddie Ficlets) [3]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Teen AU, because i need to give you a break from your tears (sort of), description of violence (not graphic), swears, this can be interpreted as pre or post-relationship, very very brief mention of homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 08:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12406632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pekorama/pseuds/pekorama
Summary: Richie gets into trouble. Eddie takes him for a late night drive.





	because you're young, he's a gun

Eddie stared up at his ceiling with bloodshot eyes. His face was pale and blue in the light that leaked in from his bedroom window, making the shadows under his eyes all the more noticeable. It was late. He didn’t know how late, exactly, but it was too late for this shit. He lay sprawled on his back, all his blankets and covers sitting in a twisted heap on the floor beside him. One hand rested on his stomach and the other underneath his pillow, enjoying its coolness.

 _The phone’s gonna ring again_ , he thought to himself.

The phone rang again.

“ _Fuck me_ ,” Eddie groaned, and rolled off of his bed in one surprisingly fluid motion. He’d been expecting this. The phone had been ringing for the last twenty minutes. It would ring, and ring, and ring, and then stop for what felt like five heavenly seconds at best, and then it would ring again, somehow louder than before. He kept hoping his mom would finally wake up and answer it. He loathed answering the phone like he loathed Henry Bowers, or hornets, or going to the hospital. If it were one of his friends, it would be a different story. But he couldn’t be sure it would be one of his friends. It could be a telemarketer from another time zone, or some twisted serial killer (he wasn’t sure which he feared more). Sonia’s Kaspbrak’s bear-like snores drifted through the house, and when the phone rang for the nth time, the thought of being murdered suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

Eddie pulled on his house coat and padded across the room, his slightly oversized flannel pants dragging on the floor. He stopped at his dresser, took the watch that was resting on its surface, and fumbled with it for a few seconds until he managed to get it on. _1:28 am_. He closed his door gently and paused outside his mother’s room, listening for a lull in her snores. Nada.

The phone stopped ringing when he was halfway down the stairs. He made it the rest of the way and ambled into the kitchen, feeling the cool linoleum under his bare feet. “I swear to god if I came down here for nothing…” he muttered scoldingly. _Just my fucking luck_. He was about to sit at his kitchen table when the ring came again, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Muttering a string of curse words, he rushed over, nearly knocking over his chair, and fumbled the phone out of its cradle. Deep breaths, Eddie, it’s probably just a creepily persistent wrong number.

“Hello?”

“Eddie!” The voice on the other end was all too familiar, and apparently very excited to hear his voice. Relieved, even.

“Richie?” Eddie’s dumbfounded tone quickly switched to frustration. “Richie! I swear to god if you’ve been trying to prank call me this whole time I will come over there and fucking strangle you with your own phone cord ㄧ”

“C-can you come get me?” Richie’s voice sounded shaky, and Eddie felt his heart twinge unpleasantly at the sound. He sound scared and a bit like he’d been crying, and even worse, he added a timid, “Please?”

Eddie’s tongue pressed to the side of his cheek and he rubbed at his neck, casting a cautionary glance towards the stairs. He lowered the phone from his ear, listening for his mom. Surprise, surprise, she was still out cold. He raised the phone back to his ear. “What happened?”

Richie hesitated, Eddie could hear it in the hitch of his breath. He hated how distant his voice sounded right now. Crackling, full of static, miles away. Hell knows where and hells knows in what situation, in what state. “I’m at that one payphone, sort of near the train tracks? I, uh,” he said, and then in a more ashamed tone, “I got into a fight.”

“Shit,” Eddie exhaled, shutting his eyes tightly, “Okay. Stay right there. I’m on my way.”

He hung up immediately, just catching the beginning of a ‘thank you’.

Eddie stared at a chip in the wallpaper for a few seconds, trying his best to collect his thoughts and form some sort of plan. His mom noticed things. Too many things. She would notice that the gas in her car was missing, or that his shoes were dustier than the day before… and if she woke up in the middle of the night and found him gone… he could kiss his friends and freedom goodbye.

_Fuck it._

He turned, snatched the car keys from the kitchen counter, and grabbed his jacket. He placed his bathrobe on the hook in its place, and was out the door seconds later. He braced himself against the wind and climbed into the driver’s seat of his mom’s Mercedes Benz. The keys were in the ignition before you could say ‘grounded’. He didn’t look back.

The drive there was tense. He could drive, sure. Mike let him borrow his truck for impromptu lessons as much as possible. They would spend a couple hours working on parking, reversing, turning, the works. Mike was a lifesaver, since those occasional Saturday afternoons were the only real practice he could ever get. After all, his mom was deathly afraid of letting him drive, a shame because he was good, actually, damn good. A real natural, even if he didn’t technically have his license. ‘You could make a living out of this, y’know,’ Mike commented once. Eddie only stuck out his tongue in disgust. Sounded like hell.

 _Don’t worry, Eds_ , Richie’s voice echoed in the back of his thoughts, _one day you’ll be tall enough to reach the pedals_. This only made him more nervous. He could only hope that, whatever was going on, he wasn’t too late.

The train yard couldn’t come quickly enough. He checked near the phone booth first, but wasn’t particularly surprised to see that Richie hadn’t stayed put. He knew he wouldn’t, and kept on driving until the tracks themselves came into view.

As he drew closer, his headlights fell on a familiar figure. Richie was facing away from him, sitting on the train tracks with his knees pulled up to his chest. Small trails of wispy smoke billowed from his lips, and from the lit cigarette poised between his fingers. Eddie sighed with relief, and parked a few feet away. Richie tilted his head as the sound of gravel crunching beneath Eddie’s shoes grew louder.

“Hey,” he said simply. There was an almost guilty quality to his voice. Richie still faced away from him, clearly hiding something. Eddie shivered and yawned all at once, and through his yawn he replied with a ‘hey’, just as simple. Eddie kneeled beside him, ignoring the fact that he was getting his pajamas dirty. Not saying another word, he reached out and gently cupped Richie’s chin in his warm fingers, turning his head towards him.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

Richie’s bottom lip was split and puffed into a pout that Eddie had to admit was still somehow attractive. Dried blood clung to his skin in a dark trail leading that led from his left nostril to his upper lip. Thankfully, it didn’t look broken, but still damn near. His right eye was bruised a deep purple. Richie smiled apologetically, his cigarette hanging from his lips. He reached up with a trembling hand and removed it from his mouth, grinding the ashes into the rocks beside him. His knuckles were bruised and bloody. “Pretty cool, huh? Battle scars,” he mused.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

Richie’s lip twitched, and then he grinned even wider. “You should see the other guy.”

Eddie only frowned in response. He stood up suddenly, and began to walk away, storming off as fast as he could. Richie’s head whipped around and he rose to his feet. His long legs carried him to Eddie faster than the short boy could escape. “Eds, I’m fine, really,” Richie laughed, “I can barely feel a thing. It was just some stupid homophobe again.”

Eddie spun around, scowling. “You’re not fine! Look what he did to you!” he shouted, hitting Richie’s chest, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to show how angry and helpless and frustrated he felt. Not with Richie, but with the world. And then, not knowing what else to do, he threw his arms around Richie and hugged him as tightly as he could. “This isn’t fucking fine,” Eddie whispered into his shoulder.

When he let go, his hand slid down and interlaced with Richie’s. Wordlessly, he tugged him towards the passenger’s seat, and helped him in. Though he hadn’t mentioned it, Eddie could tell by the way Richie walked, slightly bent over, that he had taken a few good licks to the stomach.

“Buckle up,” he reminded him before closing the door. He walked around the front of the car, and as he did so, Richie watched in smitten admiration at the way Eddie absentmindedly traced his fingers along the hood. When he reentered in the driver’s seat, Richie was still staring.

Eddie was too busy thinking to notice.

As they pulled out of the train yard, he gripped the steering wheel and focused his eyes ahead, hard. His brows were furrowed and he kept chewing his lip, a detail only Richie would notice. Richie watched him intently, wondering what was going through his head, and Eddie could see in the corner of his eye that Richie’s face, though out of focus, was worried. He kept his eyes trained on the road ahead of him, refusing to return the gaze.

He was afraid he would burst into tears if he did. The silence was suddenly tense, and Eddie wanted it to stop but couldn’t bring himself to look Richie in the eye. He knew it wasn’t really his fault, but resented him in some small, weird, confusing way for scaring him like this.

The quiet stretched on too long. Richie decided to break it.

“I’m sorry, Eds,” he said softly, turning to face out the window, “I shouldn’t have called you.” Eddie was about to say something when Richie pressed on. “I, uh, heh, put the coins in and I dialled your number first, and there was no answer, obviously. And then I thought, well, ‘I should call one of the others. Maybe Bev will pick up. Or Ben, or Mike. He has his truck’. But…” He shook his head and shrugged limply. “I don’t know, I just kept calling you.”

Eddie glanced at Richie this time, then reached out and touched his shoulder. The contact was brief, Eddie didn’t like to drive with only one hand, but it was enough. Richie turned towards him again, and their eyes finally met. “I’m glad you called me,” Eddie said in a warm voice, and smiled a bit sadly, “And I’m not mad at you. I just, I-I, I worry about you so fucking much. I don’t like seeing you get hurt and ㄧ” Eddie interrupted himself with a sudden snort of laughter. “ㄧ God, I sound exactly like my mom.”

Richie laughed loudly, clapping his hand over his mouth. “Oh my god, you do.” He didn’t mean it in a cruel way, and Eddie knew, and grinned in spite of himself.

“Shut up! That’s like, my worst nightmare.”

“Aw, I don’t know, I think you acting like your mom is kind of hot. She’s a catch.” Eddie howled with laughter and made a gagging noise, wailing a small ‘gr-o-o-oss’. Richie reached out and pinched his cheek as Eddie fought him off with one arm.

“Are you trying to make me crash this car?”

“Then we’ll have matching shiners!”

They both laughed for a long time after that. Eddie had half the mind to realize it wasn’t even funny because the joke was funny, but because they were both tired as shit. According to the little digital screen of his watch, it was almost 3 am. They kept laughing anyways.

Richie’s house was close by.

“Seriously though,” Eddie said, “if you’re going to get the shit kicked out of you, call me first.”

“Why?”

Eddie flashed him a devilish grin. “So I can come back you up.”

Richie grinned at his lap. His house came into view, and then it was gone. “Eddie, you missed ㄧ”

“I know,” Eddie said, not missing a beat, and kept driving forward, “Sleep at my house tonight.” Richie blinked at him, half-smirking, not sure how to take this. Eddie looked at him with raised eyebrows and shrugged. “What? It’s the only way I can keep you out of trouble.”

Eddie watched the road from then on, and Richie watched him, wondering with a stupid sort of giddiness ㄧ despite the ache in his skull and the blood on his tongue ㄧ what he ever did to deserve a boy like that.


End file.
